


Semantics

by Impressioniste



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Pillow Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1271275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impressioniste/pseuds/Impressioniste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke never promised him 'forever'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semantics

**Author's Note:**

> More old fic, reposted.

"It’s been three years," Hawke murmurs softly one night as they lay half-asleep in the dark, his face partially buried in his pillow.

"I know," Anders sighs almost inaudibly, his back turned slightly with one of Hawke’s large, heavy arms draping comfortably over him.

He wants to say more than that, but he’s tripping over his own tongue before the words have even left his brain and formed sounds, and he bites them back. What is there to say? ‘Thank you,’ is on his lips, but it seems so utterly inadequate. ‘I love you,’ is hanging there too, but that seems just as inadequate, in an entirely different way.

The room is silent, a silence heavy with words unspoken, waiting to be breathed into life by gentle whispers or soft sighs backed by voices faltering under the weight of three years’ worth of feelings they’d both indulged in and shied away from.

They’ve never been short of love, but love is hardly all that matters. Love doesn’t write manifestos or run clinics or run rescue missions into the heart of the Gallows, and it certainly doesn’t attend parties in Hightown or meetings with the Viscount or exterminate gangs of raiders up and down the Wounded Coast.

But they do all those things, and love waits patiently in the background for the moments when it is allowed to take the spotlight and push everything else away, for a time.

It is there when Anders comes home late at night after a particularly trying day in his clinic, reeking of sweat and sulfur and elfroot and seeking little else but comfort; It is there when Hawke stumbles home in the wee hours of morning after one too many glasses of fancy Hightown wine and finds Anders still waiting up for him; It is there to share kisses and quarrels, to share hopes and dreams and wounds—both those on the surface and those running far, far deeper beneath.

Anders lets his hand seek out Hawke’s, which is resting comfortably on his hip. Their fingers slide together with almost unconscious familiarity, and he marvels at the fact that such closeness with another person can exist for someone like him at all.

Love isn’t everything, but it does endure, and it brings him peace—a temporary respite from templars and taints and spirits and sins on his soul that won’t ever wipe clean.

Love isn’t forever; Anders knows it simply _can’t_ be, but it’s taken him three long years to realize, which he _does_ , now, with startling clarity—that ‘forever’ isn’t what Hawke expects of him.

Forever is a platitude, a meaningless romantic banality, and while Anders can appreciate the thought behind it, he knows he can’t ever live up to it.

But Hawke never promised him ‘forever’, never _asked_ him for forever. He’d said—

_"—until the day we die.”_

Not ‘ _forever_ ’, but only ‘ _as long as they lived_ ’. Not an impossible, unattainable goal, but only as much as he could give—no more, no less.

For Anders, that makes all the difference. His fingers tighten in Hawke’s grip, and he smiles in the dark, the blanket of crushing inadequacy lifting from his lips.

"I’m still here," he says.

"I know," Hawke replies.


End file.
